Talk to a computing legend like Dave Patterson, and you're bound to happen on some unexpected discoveries.
The Berkeley professor and RISC/RAID pioneer this week joined Chris Hipp and me for Episode 9 of Semi-Coherent Computing. Patterson surprised the heck out of us with some off topic news that Google is paying for employees …

COMMENTS

Never attribute to malice...

Well, after two days of trial-and-error testing, it appears that I cannot download the episode 9, MP3 file. Nor can I re-download any of the eight prior MP3 files linked from earlier SCC articles. And yet it also appears that I presently have at least half a megabit of available bandwidth going either upstream or downstream.

Clearly, desktop PCs -are- doomed to banality. Over time, any non-mainstream digital content will become increasingly difficult to access and view/hear. If for no better reason, than because most broadband providers cannot be bothered to differentiate between (for example) a 23 MByte pirated Metallica album, and a 23 MByte ElReg interview with David Patterson. And so will block/throttle all, indiscriminately.

That being said...

How -does- one determine if one's internet connection service (in this instance, Verizon) has implemented MP3 file transfer blocking?

... what you can attribute to greed

I can actually answer this question. I was looking at using Verizon for my ISP, but went with T-Mobile instead because in Verizon's T&C's it specifically says you're not allowed to download music or video or play games over it. T-Mobile has no such restrictions, although it's far too "bursty" for gaming.